I'm Thankful for ... Garlic

(Nov. 24) -- In Vermont, right around when we gardeners harvest squashes, dig potatoes, beets and turnips, and watch the forecast to get all the tomatoes in before frost -- we're also planting. Garlic.

It's simple: Break apart heads of garlic, put each clove root end down in the chilly soil, with a few inches between cloves. One could do this in September; I rarely get to it until November. Sometimes the soil's already bladed with small sharp shards of ice.

Each of these garlic cloves becomes, eventually, a head. But not for awhile.

Hard to imagine the garlic's there, vital, hidden under feet of snow, for in Vermont, we may not see bare ground from December until April.

Look past America's Thanksgiving iteration, Pilgrims-Indians-turkey, and you'll find a praise-song lifted throughout the world: the harvest festival.

Such festivals always reference not only harvest but time. Barren winter becomes fecund spring, riotous summer, fall's abundant multiplicity. Then, again, winter's little death.

Since I'm a cook and gardener, Thanksgiving comes naturally to me. I easily enumerate the once-a-year dishes: sweet potatoes, which I do with brown sugar and Grand Marnier. Mashed potatoes, which I do with celeriac, mascarpone, an unconscionable amount of butter. A triple-layer torte renowned in my circle: bottom layer, homemade green tomato mincemeat; middle layer, pumpkin custard; top layer; a shatteringly crisp glaze of bruleed pecans.

Too, Thanksgiving falls right around my birthday. About once every 18 years it falls on my birthday. This year is one of those years. I'll turn 58. The last time my birthday coincided with Thanksgiving, I turned 40.

I lived in Arkansas then, and was not "just" a writer/cook/workshop leader but also an innkeeper/restaurateur. My co-innkeeper, to whom I was married, was also hyphenated: an artist/writer/historic preservationist. We'd been together since I was 24, he 22. I spent my 40th birthday in our inn's kitchen; he worked the front. Two seatings, 40 guests apiece, then staff Thanksgiving. Gorgeous food. My feet hurt by day's end.

Was I happy? I think so, but I may have been too busy to notice. I was grateful, though: our inn and dining room were full of delighted guests; my friends George and Starr were playing hammered dulcimer and fiddle; I loved my husband and he me. Hearing the sounds, seeing the people, inhaling the roasting, simmering redolent layers of the familiar foods: the incantatory repetitive power of that, again, in that place was such that I barely noticed turning 40.

In 2000, five days after my birthday that year, my husband went out for his three-times-a-week bicycle ride. His bicycle and a small pick-up collided. He bicycled far, far away, up and into eternity.

So 2010, five days after my coming Thanksgiving birthday will mark the 10-year anniversary of Ned's death.

When you get over a loss like this fully is never.

And yet.

I'm no longer in Arkansas, no longer an innkeeper. For the past eight years, I've lived in deep partnership with another hyphenated fellow, David Koff, a filmmaker/social justice activist/writer.

"Will the circle be unbroken?" asks the old hymn. Grammatically a question, it's is usually sung as a statement.

I wonder a lot about whether life is or isn't unbroken, unbreakable, particularly around this time of year. Mostly, I think it is both.

Those who sit at our Thanksgiving table this year may or may not be here next year. I am grateful for them now.

Grateful that I loved Ned then. Time necessarily dims memory, a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. But I once loved him undimmed and was grateful then, in the past that's a former now.

And I know that though I lost Ned, I did not lose love itself. (Can love itself, not love of someone, be lost? Where would it go? I know that this is inexplicable, but I know, with the deepest gratitude and amazement, that it is true. )

Conundrum: I could not know and love David (and be known and loved by him) had Ned not died. I am grateful that somehow, I've been able to accept this unacceptable fact. Which makes possible an undimmed now -- now with David.

I am grateful for friends, longtime ones like Starr and George, newer ones here in Vermont, like Gaelen and Rich, with whom David and I often share Thanksgiving, at a table full of beautiful food. Grateful, but always, simultaneously, with an inward kink: Who can forget that so many have no food at all?

And yet.

Here I am, by luck, grace, karma, or chance. At the feast.

We break. Yet the circle itself will forever be unbroken. That is a mystery which we can resist or accept, but with which we must live. Inherent in love is loss. Inherent in harvest is winter. Inherent in endings are beginnings. Life's terms are impossibly poignant.

And yet.

Tall, pale green spikes will poke up in next spring's messy, sodden garden.

I am grateful for garlic.

Crescent Dragonwagon describes herself as being "as prolific as a zucchini plant," having written 50 published books, in genres including fiction, cookbooks/culinary memoir, picture books, and poetry. To find out more about Crescent's latest projects, visit her blog on Red Room.


Thanksgiving Week Special: I'm Thankful for ...
We asked a successful businessman, a former soap opera star, best-selling novelists and other popular writers to share what they are thankful for this year. The articles will run throughout Thanksgiving week.

Monday: A Moment in September -- Jessica Barksdale Inclan
Monday: My Writing Life -- Meg Waite Clayton
Tuesday: Long-Distance Love -- Kathy Briccetti
Tuesday: The Cornucopia of America -- Tina Sloan
Tuesday: A Special Photograph -- Tim Wise
Wednesday: Garlic -- Crescent Dragonwagon
Wednesday: Expressions of Gratitude -- Jacqueline Winspear
Wednesday: All of My Feelings -- Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy
Thursday: Entertaining Strangers -- Pat Montandon
Thursday: Being Home Together -- Kerry Madden
Friday: The Chance to Give Back -- Wally Amos
Friday: A'isha, the Jewel of Medina -- Sherry Jones